I predict that their first move will be to increase the frequency of Frankston trains from 10 to 8 minutely, due to marginal seats, followed by the extension of all off-peak trains to Hurstbridge, again due to being in an extremely marginal seat.

After those are done, late night services to Frankston will be increased from 20/30 to 15 minutely, also due to the large marginal seats in the area, followed by a pilot of 7 day night network services running 30 minutely between 00:00 and 05:00, which will also be first introduced to the Frankston line.

Eventually once it's considered that the Frankston line is full and cannot take any more trains, they may allocate some additional services to the western suburbs while they cook up a plan to quadruplicate the whole Frankston line, in order to provide more express trains to marginal seats.

BroadGauge wrote:Eventually once it's considered that the Frankston line is full and cannot take any more trains, they may allocate some additional services to the western suburbs while they cook up a plan to quadruplicate the whole Frankston line, in order to provide more express trains to marginal seats.

You forgot Skyrail, High Capacity Signalling and longer trains along with the quadruplicate of course. While we're there, we can throw in a V/Line service to Stony Point so that Frankston commuters can enjoy the comforts Pakenham commuters used to have. And don't forget to vote with your wallet by shopping at Southland to show how much you appreciate the improvements.

followed by the extension of all off-peak trains to Hurstbridge, again due to being in an extremely marginal seat.

Probably not possible without making the whole service unreliable and having trains wait annoying periods of time at Diamond Creek and Eltham, thus defeating the purpose. I suspect that's the real reason the 343 quickly went from a Greensborough - Diamond Creek bus to a Greensborough - Hurstbridge bus.

While we're there, we can throw in a V/Line service to Stony Point so that Frankston commuters can enjoy the comforts Pakenham commuters used to have.

Wasn't that trialled with the ex-Adelaide Redhens? What was the issue with that in the end that killed the idea?

Sorry guys, you're not as cynical as you think...

As for the original post, I have doubts too given the Liberal Party's recent track record of promising things (Doncaster and Rowville Rail, Avalon Airport rail) and finding reasons to not do them once unexpectedly elected into government. And before someone mentions the PSOs, it was a law and order promise more than a transport promise (and probably considered to be cheaper than a significant expansion of the police force in general by providing cheaper PSOs with higher visibility of a promise kept - literally it could be said given the fluoro vests they wear). And the other issue mentioned (10 minutes to Frankston / Dandenong) as being Liberal - wasn't that a Labour party promise and planned before the change of government?

For a start, what would be in it for the Liberals expanding Werribee or Sunbury services over marginal seats in the east and southeast? (Werribee was specifically mentioned in the news video, as I think was Sunbury). For the cynical among us, using the Victorian Electoral Commission downloadable spreadsheet to calculate and sort by most marginal to least marginal seat, the order of 10 minute services most likely would be:1. Sandringham (Prahran is held by 0.07%).2. All the Frankston marginal seats (but Frankston already has 10 minute services)3. Cranbourne (4.67%, but would it be possible with the single line?)4. Greensborough (Eltham [5.39%]almost reaches Greensborough station, and the reasonable bus services east from there through the seat of Eltham would increase the effect, moreso if they too were upgraded to match the service, and Ivanhoe is held by 6.82%)5. Alamein (Burwood is held by 6.33%)6. South Morang (Yan Yean is held by 7.31%, enough to justify an earlier extension to Mernda than originally promised)After that the next is Sunbury at 8.59% (so maybe the Libs might have an interest in the west after all - is this achievable or is the margin too great?), Glen Waverley (Mt Waverley is held by 9.18%), Upper Ferntree Gully (Bayswater at 9.25%, Ringwood at 10.14%, plus 15 minute frequencies are cheaper to upgrade than 20) and everything else is 10% or higher so presumably unlikely to change party.

krustyklo wrote:After that the next is Sunbury at 8.59% (so maybe the Libs might have an interest in the west after all - is this achievable or is the margin too great?)

It's marginal enough that it could be worthwhile for a party to promise to extend the 20 minute frequency to the last two stations (no idea why it wasn't provided when the line was electrified), but if you look at the rest of the seats along the line, you can see there's no political justification at all to improve anything.

Footscray district - ALP by 14.49%St Albans district - ALP by 17.5%(Kororoit district - ALP by 19.98%)Sydenham district - ALP by 16.26%Sunbury district - ALP by 4.3%

Those figures are based on the two-party preferred vote, as opposed to the first preference figures that I think you've used.

PTV was meant to take the politics out of transport: of course it hasn't.No railway management has ever run consistent or connecting transport: neither the timetables nor the interchanges.Right now, every electrified route can accommodate 20 min headways, and that should be the standard from first service to last. This improves connectivity.All-night could then be either 40 or 30.Nearly all of the system can accommodate 10 min headways, and that should apply for much of each day, improving connectivity even more.PTV isn't doing anything to remove the blockers to success, and is pursuing its ill-justified expensive projects.Single line Greensborough - Eltham, Mooroolbark - Lilydale, Ferntree Gully - Upper Ferntree Gully, Dandenong - Cranbourne, and lack of a half-way crossing loop Frankston - Stony Point.Werribee: 10 min headways, express North Melbourne - Footscray - Newport, down via Altona, up via the straight. The useless PTV just spent money to remove cross-platform interchange at Laverton.Williamstown: 10 min headways, stopping at all stations.Sunbury: 10 min headways, with VLine pathed just ahead of one at Sunshine, and overtaking at Sydenham Watergardens. The useless DoT built SW not to allow cross-platform interchange for overtakes.Craigieburn: 10 min headways, with VLine pathed to overtake at Essendon on the down, Broadmeadows on the up.Gowrie: 10 min headways, with every second to Upfield. Needs only one more signal and a safety path for the reversal. 10 to Upfield does fit, but is breathless, and would require a drop-on crew.South Morang: 10 min headways.Greensborough: 10 min headways, with every second to Hurstbridge.Mooroolbark: 10 min headways, with every second to Lilydale.Alamein: 10 min headways, changing at Camberwell, but across the bridge for down trains. Alternatively, 10 min headways for Blackburn/Alamein trains, splitting/combining at Camberwell. PTV couldn't cope.Upper Ferntree Gully: 10 min headways, with every second to Belgrave. This is saturation from FG to UFG, but the useless PTV has set the rules that it won't change the signalling at UFG, and won't duplicate across the level crossing.Dandenong: 10 min headways, with every second to Pakenham and every other second to Cranbourne.Frankston: 10 min headways. With slight signalling/rules changes, crossing at Long Island Jn would allow 60 min headways to Stony Point.Brighton Beach: 5 min headways (real turn up and go), with every second to Sandringham. Interworked with Werribee & Williamstown. Keeping this as 10 and running Werribee to Frankston works as a timetable, but not for passengers.The major routes have peak-period infill capacity.

It was the equally-useless DoI/DoT then: Both made sure that PTV was a clone.Admin: One line removedLaverton was designed to destroy flexibility or any level of improved service. Metro can't even provide 20 min headways: it slowed trains to 22, and of the shunting congestion at Newport has been retained.Roderick.

WTF Roderick? I'm not even from Melbourne and I can see that 20 minute frequency to Hurstbridge isn't going work and shouldn't be attempted.

If you're going to do anything, wouldn't it be a 15 minute frequency to Eltham and 30 minutes to Hurstbridge. 40 minute frequency is ridiculous; not even clockface. Would still be a major squeeze on the current infrastructure, requiring a crew swap at Hurstbridge and a timetable squeeze to achieve a no margin precision cross at Diamond Creek. I'd wonder about the trade of downgrading Wattle Glen and Hurstbridge to 60 minutes off peak and upgrading Eltham and Montmorency to 30 minutes. Would be far more reliable. There is also the option of duplicating the plain track between Wattle Glen and Eltham but there's a few obstacles.

^ Eltham and Montmorency are already every 20 minutes off-peak. They're not all that busy most of the time, but reducing services to every 30 minutes probably wouldn't go down well.

Obviously the ideal option would be to just duplicate and upgrade Eltham to every 10 minutes, then close the rest of the line. Diamond Creek can be served by fast and frequent buses from Greensborough. Wattle Glen and Hurstbridge are so insignificant to the network that hardly anyone would be affected.

Whether or not it can or will ever be done without too much political backlash is the real question. It was only in 2010 that the Labor government was investigating duplicating the line all the way to Hurstbridge.

It all depends where you are from. Brisbane is horrible, and Sydney not much better. 15/30 is useless, and isn't clockface either. That applies beyond Ringwood, where the weekend daytime timetable beats the weekday one. It also applies in evenings.As I opened: 10/20 is way better, and provides connectivity across the whole system. As soon as routes are mismatched, connectivity is destroyed. All electrified routes can handle 20 (at least most of the way).Hurstbridge should be on 20, and of course it works: that is why Diamond Creek was resignalled.For Eltham to go 10 needs duplication from Greensborough to the up end of Diamond Creek bridge. The bridge over Plenty river was built for two tracks.

Roderick Smith wrote:Hurstbridge should be on 20, and of course it works: that is why Diamond Creek was resignalled.

For all of about 5500 people in Wattle Glen and Hurstbridge, with zero growth prospects being in a green wedge?

For what's there it's already overserviced with a poorly used 40 minute service 7 days a week, with trains until midnight every day and all night on weekends. Hurstbridge has the same population as Riddells Creek, which has one train every 120 minutes during the week, 180 minute gaps on weekends and nothing at all after 10pm.

No doubt the Libs will get right onto it after they build the new lines to Doncaster, Rowville and Avalon. And maybe they can find another new station to promise for $13 million seeing that Southland is now being built. It seems the Public Transport Abusers Association are back on board with their Fib mates having sung their praises before the 2010 election and then being struck dumb for the following 4 years of inactivity and broken promises. It seems you can fool them all of the time. In any event, by the election in November 2018, sufficient rolling stock will have been delivered to enable Metro to run 10 minute inter-peak frequencies on most lines that don't have them. The Metro contract anticipates such an improvement. Perhaps the Fibs will reduce them even further, no doubt starting on the Frankston line so that trains can be one third full rather than half full.

jarf wrote:^ Eltham and Montmorency are already every 20 minutes off-peak. They're not all that busy most of the time, but reducing services to every 30 minutes probably wouldn't go down well.

So my suggestion of going to 15 minutes would be a significant upgrade. I look it at from the point of view of the chance of having to wait 10+ minutes which reduces from 50/50 to one in three. 15 minute frequency is far more acceptable than 20 minutes to most people.

Roderick Smith wrote:15/30 is useless, and isn't clockface either

Clearly wrong.

Roderick Smith wrote:Hurstbridge should be on 20, and of course it works

Sigh. Diamond Creek to/from Hurstbridge takes 8 minutes. Last I checked this was a single track with no crossing opportunities. The round trip on the current timetable would be 16. Don't be stupid. It cannot be upgraded to 10 minute frequency unless you have some sort of crossing arrangement.

Roderick Smith wrote:For Eltham to go 10 needs duplication from Greensborough to the up end of Diamond Creek bridge

Ok, but 15 minute frequency is possible.

Not sure of impacts on the South Morang line but if that can be sorted, 15 minutes is about what you could achieve as far as Eltham. Of course, you could have 10 minutes to a more inner terminus like Greensborough.

system improver wrote:Perhaps the Fibs will reduce them even further, no doubt starting on the Frankston line so that trains can be one third full rather than half full.

Are you suggesting that a line running half full off peak is over serviced? Reducing frequency would deter patronage, obviously. Increasing it to 7.5minutes would see a law of diminishing returns vs the 15minute to 10 minute increase although I can conceive some increase.

Allegedly Two Party Preferred according to the section on the webpage and the name of the file. https://www.vec.vic.gov.au/Elections/Files/2PPVote2014.xls The only thing I did to it was subtract one percentage from the other and use the ABS function to make the differences all positive before sorting the list. Happy for someone else to replicate the process to see where I went wrong - it takes about a minute to do once downloaded and opened.

If you're going to do anything, wouldn't it be a 15 minute frequency to Eltham and 30 minutes to Hurstbridge.

It is 7 minutes each way according to the timetable. Although potentially doable, would leave no recovery time and would be more problematic than it is worth. Allegedly duplicating the line will be studied as a follow on to the Heidelberg to Rosanna duplication. Although it is easy to be cynical, I suspect it has some chance given the current government's response to giving things to marginal electorates (eg, Mernda extension brought forward, both intermediate stations being built on the Mernda extension instead of just one, trenching crossings on the Frankston line). If that does happen and duplication gets as far as the trestle bridge which has been part of the argument against in the past, 10 minutes to Eltham would be achievable and politically popular locally.

[url]There is also the option of duplicating the plain track between Wattle Glen and Eltham but there's a few obstacles.[/url]The most useful place to do that would be between Eltham and Diamond Creek, but the creek is the major obstacle there and it would be too expensive to do for the benefit gained. Whilst Diamond Creek is busy enough, past there doesn't justify any improvement - very low density, green wedge population. Hurstbridge acts as a feeder point for the surrounding area (Panton Hill, St Andrews, etc) but still not enough to warrant significant money being spent on duplicating from Diamond Creek to Hurstbridge although it would be a relatively straight forward task.

Eltham and Montmorency are already every 20 minutes off-peak. They're not all that busy most of the time, but reducing services to every 30 minutes probably wouldn't go down well.

Agreed on Montmorency, I suspect Eltham might respond to a better off peak service with improved patronage given it serves a wider area and there seems to be a fair bit of traffic along the area served by the railway line, hence the proposal to build the North East Link through Ivanhoe to serve both the Eastlink bound traffic and the traffic heading to the inner northern suburbs and CBD.

Obviously the ideal option would be to just duplicate and upgrade Eltham to every 10 minutes, then close the rest of the line. Diamond Creek can be served by fast and frequent buses from Greensborough. Wattle Glen and Hurstbridge are so insignificant to the network that hardly anyone would be affected.

Whether or not it can or will ever be done without too much political backlash is the real question.

Whilst I largely agree with you, I think Diamond Creek should retain a service - 20 minutes would be possible now. And the politics would be nasty if there were any serious proposal to close the line past Eltham. Every time I have suggested closing past Diamond Creek on any forum, I get told I have no idea about the hordes who allegedly get on from Hurstbridge and Wattle Glen. Given I live where I can see the trains go past before they get to Greensborough, use the 902 where I can see trains arriving and leaving from Hurstbridge from the bus sitting at the bus stop at Eltham station, and have been known to rarely but occasiaonlly use the train itself past Eltham, I somehow have failed to see said crowded trains past Eltham in peak hour, let alone off peak. My experience is that the trains are well used past Greensborough weekday off peak and during the day on weekends, virtually empty in the evening after the peak, and have a full seated load and some standees during peak hour in the peak direction. Greensborough is quite busy and well used, Eltham does OK, Diamond Creek is reasonable and possibly worth considering extending Eltham trains to there, especially once the line to Eltham is duplicated. Montmorency gets about the service it needs but isn't too busy, Hurstbridge serves a wide area but doesn't seem to be much more busy than Montmorency, and Wattle Glen is a ghost town and I'd hate to be the PSOs stationed there...

On that basis, Greensborough should go to a 10 minute frequency, Eltham once built could possibly grow enough patronage to justify the marginal extra expense over Greensborough, Diamond Creek could potentially justify a 20 minute service and Hurstbridge can retain the service it has now which is overkill. If anyone has any doubts, maybe actually ride the train to Hurstbridge and count the number of people who get on and off there. It is a pleasant ride in itself if nothing else, a bit like riding Vline but much slower past Eltham...

It all depends where you are from. Brisbane is horrible, and Sydney not much better.

I must admit when I lived in Sydney in 1994 having moved from Melbourne, it greatly surprised me that a supposedly better city had much worse rail services. I had come from a service every 20 minutes as standard to a place where every 30 minutes was standard (except on the North Shore). In addition, Melbourne obviously had multi modal ticketing for some time before then, in Sydney I had to pay for every segment of my journey. It seemed entirely backward. I did wonder whether a contributing cause was in Melbourne we had 3 car single deck trains on most lines then, whereas Sydney had 8 car double deckers as standard - I wonder if the much larger capacity of Sydney trains killed any case for running them more often?

The bridge over Plenty river was built for two tracks.

Given the standards have changed since that bridge was built, I wonder if it would need to be replaced now anyway. Would be a shame if so, I quite like the current bridge. It has far more character than the concrete slabs built as bridges now.

Most bridges between Greensborough and Eltham seem to have been designed for easy duplication (certainly Railway Rd overbridge has abutments, and I think Sherbourne Rd is suspiciously wide as well).

There is a case for duplicating lines all the way to the terminus - as well as being able to provide a frequent service along the whole line, the single track sections causes many headaches and delays on a daily basis. The peak timetable as a result has no standard pattern at all and goes out the window at the slightest delay.

IMO the Hurstbridge line should be duplicated Greensborough - Diamond Creek to allow a full service to operate to Diamond Creek with buses beyond. Greensborough also needs a third platform for terminating trains.

krustyklo wrote:After that the next is Sunbury at 8.59% (so maybe the Libs might have an interest in the west after all - is this achievable or is the margin too great?), Glen Waverley (Mt Waverley is held by 9.18%), Upper Ferntree Gully (Bayswater at 9.25%, Ringwood at 10.14%, plus 15 minute frequencies are cheaper to upgrade than 20) and everything else is 10% or higher so presumably unlikely to change party.

Wait, Ringwood is a Liberal seat? *Ignoring the giant Liberal Party/Michael Sukkar signs to the east of the station and on the Officeworks building*

No wonder it's home to the biggest collection of car dealers in Australia, residential streets don't have footpaths, forcing people to walk on the road (and then get stopped by the police asking why you're walking on the road, the only alternative being the grass with a well-worn dirt/mud trail on it, with or without cars parked on it, where the footpath is supposed to be), pedestrian lights take forever to change as they are designed to detect the presence of cars and hold the cycle longer, the trains run every half an hour at night (forget those Ringwood-only, down-only trains for a minute), as well as still running 3 carriage trains, and no expresses on the weekend (skipping East Richmond doesn't count), and a number of Transdev buses stop running well before the 9PM "standard" on the weekend too!

Yes it is but I believe that timetable has a bit of slack in it, albeit not as bad as Sydney or Brisbane.

That's as maybe, but you aren't going to cut the time by much more than a minute each way. It still doesn't leave a lot of slack for late running. I doubt you'd even get a minute - there are a few restrictions on the line including the trestle bridge and I'm pretty sure the approach to Greensborough station from the single line has some sort of limit too, possibly due to the ungated pedestrian crossing.

What the timetable doesn't tell you is how much of that time the train is actually at the station with the reverse path clear; so for our purposes that remains an unknown.

At Greensborough off peak after the resignalling and elimination of the electric staff section, the train from the city arrives around xx.05/25/45 and departs at xx.08/28/48, with the train from Eltham to the city scheduled to depart at xx.08/28/48 also. This was altered from the previous long standing arrangement of the Eltham train scheduled to arrive then leave 2 minutes after the departure of the city train, presumably to leave enough time to transfer the staff from the up train to the down train via the electric staff machine. I am guessing the introduction of the waiting time was to deal with the unreliability problem by having the Eltham train ready to depart the second the city train leaves the single track. There is/was also waiting time at Eltham in the counter peak direction. Not that much of an unknown. There is very little time most of the day there isn't a train on the single track Greensborough to Eltham with a train waiting at one end or another. A train graph would easily show this, or a human eyeball at Greensborough and/or Eltham.

The other issue of course is turn around time at Eltham / Hurstbridge. It's all very well to suggest the line could be yet more efficiently used but at the least you'd need 3 minutes for the driver to walk from one end of the train to the other at Eltham and/or Hurstbridge, or accept that a driver is going to sit at Eltham for 15 minutes twiddling his/her thumbs. If the latter operation is used, it also introduces the risk of drivers being in the wrong place if a train is terminated at Greensborough for some reason. Just because it is theoretically possible to squeeze a 15 minute service in, doesn't mean it is desirable or doesn't have unintended consequences, in this case I would suggest to reliability of the service from late running and/or out of place drivers causing other issues down the line.

IMO the Hurstbridge line should be duplicated Greensborough - Diamond Creek to allow a full service to operate to Diamond Creek with buses beyond.

As a taxpayer, Eltham is fine thanks. Have a look at the number of crossings of the creek between Eltham and Diamond Creek and consider how much it would cost to duplicate that section for the benefit gained by an idealistic "double line to the terminus". There are places far more likely to benefit from the money spent - Mooroolbark to Lilydale, Upfield (and beyond to connect to the Craigieburn line), Altona loop.

Greensborough also needs a third platform for terminating trains.

My initial response was to agree - trains frequently wait outside Greensborough on the double line for platform space. Yet, it is only a problem in peak hour. How much is it reasonable to spend of taxpayer funds to solve a problem for a few hours a day that inconveniences people for a few minutes a day each? The rest of the day and on weekends (and not for every train in peak hour either), that section is fine. If the line is duplicated to Eltham as is currently supposedly to be studied, the problem goes away too as the trains will all go there instead, meaning the third platform will get as much use as Box Hill platform 1...